Gift of the Merrow
by Margolo Blu
Summary: A rewrite of Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tale The Little Mermaid, taking place in Industrial age Ireland. Draws heavily on Irish, British, Celtic, and Japanese mythology.


_Fell off the face of the earth. I'm alive...sorta. _

_Busy with life, busy with school, and work. I had a fulltime job this summer, so I wasn't around much, on the internet or at home for that matter. _

_Thanks for your support, emails, and comments. I haven't been able to respond to any of them unfortunately thanks in part to said job. I had this story uploaded briefly and removed for fear of removal by but you know what, it's a rewrite of "The Little Mermaid", the actual little Mermaid, not the disney one. It draws heavily on Celtic Mytholgoy, British Mythos, and Japanese mythology as well as the classic "The Little Mermaid". _

_Sorry, folks, hate to break it to you, but the Little Mermaid died at the end of the story. A merrow is an Irish mermaid. They were friendlier than mermaids, but the males were very ugly. I opted for a shark here. Good to be back. _

_Gift of the Merrow_

One…two…three…

Plop…plop…plop…

Lorelei wrapped up three sea bass filets…not old enough to spoil, but old enough that the attractive flesh and sheen has long since worn off. And they smelt unbelievably fishy too…Lorelei was forced to hold her nose as she folded the final sheet of salmon colored paper over the fish. The only lights on in the fish store was the single light at the counter right at the scale, and the light at the door entrance, both pathetically pale and homely compared the other lights of the store, compared to other lights around town. Just orange embers…an ode to when the town was once coal, whale oil, and wood lit…where the lights. Lorelei flicked the light off at the counter. The entire back of the fish store was dark, only for the occasional glint of metal and fish scales and blocks of ice…like silver and gemstones. Lorelei sighed and placed two of her last three coppers onto the table. She had one copper left, and two weeks until her next pay. She could not asked Mr. Filster for an early pay, since the cannery factory moved in there, business was slow at the little market. As well, Lorelei was too embarrassed to ask, too proud, to nervous.

Mr. Filster, the elderly owner of the store, her employer, was waiting at the store entrance.

"Ready Lori?" he asked.

Lorelei held her fishy bundle close to her chest, to the old, hand me down pea coat and hurried to the door, out of the darkness. "Yep."

He held the door open for Lorelei and shutting off the little ember of light. The little bell on the door handle jingled, and then was silent; retiring for the night as Mr. Filster and the rest of the village was to or already has. After a long day working in the fish market, Lorelei seemed very awake, very eager, her expression bearing not the eagerness for a cold dinner and a warm bed, but action. Mr. Filster read her face as they walked through the darkness. He knew the mousey haired girl the entire twenty-one years of her life. The last time he saw a wide eyed eager look on her face was…well…damn…when she barely came to his knees. Mr. Filster escorted Lorelei and her fishy package down Main Street.

They came to the cross section, lit by black iron street lights, round like amber pearls, Mr. Filster thought. He turned to head to his house, wrapping the scarf around his neck and burying his chin into it.

"Night Lori," he said. She did not answer; he could not even hear her footsteps on the cobbled streets. Lorelei was standing on the sidewalk, looking out into the ocean. Years ago, you could not see the ocean, but with the lights now you could just lightly see the silky crests of the dark oceans, just lightly. At night, with the amber-pearl lights, you would never think that those silky crests were a vast ocean, never. When there were no lights, you would not even think that there was an ocean there. He spoke louder, "Night Lori."

"Huh?" Lori pricked up. She waved to him, the package threatening to slip out of her arms. "Oh good night!"

"You stay away from the ocean now, girl," he joked to her, walking away, "the merfolk will steal you away."

She laughed, bundling the package close. "I don't think you have to worry about that happening Mr. Filster."

With fatherly concern, Mr. Filster watched Lorelei walk way, until the light no longer could reach her and she disappeared into the darkness. He could swear, however, he saw her form turn left, towards the beach, not right, to her uncle's house. But then again, night makes fools of us all.

There was a cave that Lorelei used to play in when she was little…all the village children played in the cave or around in, until the ships for the canning industry came and tore the beach up, it was unsafe to go to the waters and play, it was too dangerous anymore to go down to the beach. The rocks around the cave were slick with kelp and algae, carefully Lorelei navigated the rocks. Just like big cobblestones, big cobblestones covered in muddy snow, slick like clay slip.

"Sam? Sam?" Lorelei spoke into the cave. She stepped down onto the sandy cave floor…warm, dry, clean. "Sam? Whoops!"

Lorelei slipped, falling backwards, the package landing with a mushy thud beside her.

"I'm sorry," Sam hushly answered from the back of the cave. He spoke so softly, as if his voice was on the verge of disappearing…softly and patiently, slowly as if meditating over thoughts. His voice did not speak of mental slowness, or deep thought…but it spoke more of a monarch induced politeness…the youngest, shy prince of a royal family, used to being ignored, but taught to speak perfectly, but rarely given a chance to speak, to use the language, leaving it soft, hush, somewhat hoarse from disuse. He spoke as if his eyes were focused on the ground, but they were very much focused on her. The darkness darted away as Sam slowly approached her. The gentle light of his orbs chased away the darkness and cold grip of the village. He offered a soft-lead grey hand and pulled her off the sandy ground. "I did not mean to leave those there. I was tired after my swim the ocean."

Pearls, many different pearls, different colors and shaped littered the ground like marbles. Lorelei feared she may have cracked a few when she fell. Sam slowly pulled away, gently waving his finned hand, drawing the pearls away, to the corners of the cave. His shark tail scraped through the sand.

He picked up the salmon colored packaged, stroking the paper gently. He had never felt paper most his life; it was odd sensation to him. Lorelei had never felt silk, used to feeling of wool and flax, occasionally cotton, and she supposed she too would stroke it at any chance she would get.

"You are feeling much better then Sam?" she asked. Only a glint of white, like a crescent moon, white and marbled like scrimshaw, on his shoulder spoke of the run-in with the blade of one of the canning ships. Nothing, except for a shallowness of his green eyes, pale like grass under a stone, eyes spoke of the sickness that overtook him.

"I have felt quite well for a few days," Sam answered. He offered her the package back.

"No, no," she said. "It's yours. It's your dinner; I hope you do not mind sea bass."

"I have eaten Lorelei," Sam stated, he gestured to the back of the cave, where he had woven his home from kelp, sand, shells, and the magic of sea fae, "quite well actually."

Lorelei observed a torn up net lying in a neat pile on the floor. "That looks like a net from a canning ship."

"Perhaps it was," Sam answered, looking over his shoulder at her. "Does it bother you that I have done such?"

Lorelei, holding the package, chewed on her thumbnail. She answered straightly, knowing the answer, but mulling over her own morality at the choice. "No."

The merman…the merrow…the sharkman…did not answer, did not react. He stood with his back to her, one hand on the wall.

"Are you well enough to travel back home?" Lorelei swallowed and asked.

"I suppose I am," he stated, "but I am not content to leave."

"Content?" Lorelei asked.

"I do not feel ready to leave yet," Sam answered and turned. "Does it bother you, Lorelei?"

"No," she answered, wasting no time to mull.

"That is all I wanted to hear," Sam responded turning back around and slowly taking steps away from her. He seemed uneasy tonight. Perhaps it was the canning ships that bothered him. One left him near death over four months ago, and most those four months he has scarcely left the premise of the cave system. This was his first night in open water; he normally spent his time in the great underwater expanse of the cave. A horn sounded from the cannery. Sam immediately turned his head. Lorelei was used to the sound by now. She wondered if he was too frightened to enter his kingdom anymore. "The sound of the cannery makes me uneasy. How can you sleep with the sounds of the gears echoing through earth and sea?"

"After a while you'll get used to it," Lorelei answered. Sam sat down on a ledge. His fingers lightly stroked the scar on his shoulder. It was getting smaller, and soon it would be nothing. Not even a scar would be left on his flesh. Merfolk heal differently that mortal folk he told her. It was hard to believe he was nearly torn asunder only months ago.

_Four months ago…four months…two weeks…two days ago…she did not keep count, Sam did; the lines were scraped above his bed, sorted and counted…Lorelei walked along the shoreline near dusk, dragging her childhood wagon behind her with an axe in it, and a lantern in her other hand. She was gathering and splitting driftwood for her uncle's house. There was no more wood left to burn, the house grew cold, and would grow colder throughout the night, so Lorelei risked the cold draft by the ocean so not to deal with an even draftier room later in the night. She left the wagon at the top of the rocky beach and scrabbled down the stones to the shore. _

She walked along the rocky shore, picking up worn tree branches, the broken boards of ships; any kind of wood. She'd toss it into a pile, to be collected later after she was done scanning the beach for any burnable artifacts. Anything that was too large, she would set her lantern down and gracelessly chop the wood, held stiffly between her feet, terrified each time she would cut off her toe or finger.

I hate doing this…Lorelei thought which piece of wood she collected, which each stone that she banged her foot on, with each splinter, each chop of wood…I hate this life.

Down at the shoreline where the rocky beach changed into about six feet of somewhat pebble riddled sand, there was a large form, black and shining in the night, Lorelei thought it was one of…the last of…the beautiful harbor porpoises from the bay…just another one of the harbor porpoises, shredded by the blade of a cannery ship. Upon approaching it, Lorelei could see the tendrils of darkness…blood…curling in the water, and the blood's creator was a wide, jagged cut across its back. 

_She saw that this carcass…this form beaten by the dark green waves…too big to be a porpoise…then she realized…it had legs…then it turned its head towards her as she gasped. Lorelei dropped her lantern, with a hiss like an egg dropped in a frying pan, it went out. But not before she barely spotted the glow of green…green as foxfire… _

A member of the merfolk…

He was on his stomach in the water, both arms stretched forward. He just looked at her, with two very human eyes, lacking the blankness of a fish's stare, lacking the ferocity of a shark. He looked at the axe in her hands with the gaze of an abused dog, starved and chained to an empty shed.

"Slit my throat human with the axe, turn me into the foams of ocean," he whispered. "Give me my peace, do not leave me lie here."

Lorelei dropped the axe and began to step back into the surf, the merman, just looked at her, his eyes were pained, his expression was pained. He was pleading with her.

"Please don't leave me here," he whispered. Lorelei slowly approached the merman. She realized he had fainted and lay motionlessly in the water. The gills, almost hidden behind his jaw, fluttered as waves were pushed and pulled into and from them. Nostrils on the end of his snout opened and closed. She touched the gash, the jagged edge felt like worn cotton, the blood was thick, and the wound was horrid, as if he himself was mauled by a shark. Sharks no longer roam these waters, they were the first to leave as a school of something much more hideous, much more dreadful, more ferocious, more voracious, born not on land or water or even by God's hand, a creature than only a shipyard could design and set free upon the world.

But the wound was not that bad…it did not appear that bad…

Lorelei looked at the blood on her hand, then at the unconscious sharkman. She did not like the feel of the thickened blood on her hand…she did not want anymore.

Somehow, someway, she managed to move the merman into the cave yards away. He felt lighter than air. She did not understand then why, but she understood now why. Magic. It was an element to the fae like mechanics, like iron, are elements to humanity. 

_She laid him in the cave and left him there. She brought what wood she collected in the small pile up to the house. Both her uncle and aunt were fast asleep, sleeping probably back to back, neither aware nor caring of the cold in the house. She wanted to wake them to tell them about her discovery. She rubbed her cracking fingers together as she reached for the doorknob. Blood, thick as honey, made her hand itch. She pulled her hand away._

_Instead she tossed her miserable find of firewood on the dying fire and poured some fish broth into a chipped earthenware bowl and left the house. _

Down in the cave the sharkman laid sprawled out, blood slowly dripped onto the stone floor, pooling up underneath his back. Lorelei, unsure, set the bowl at the edge of the blood pool and left. The next night, when she stepped into the cave, there was no blood upon the stone floor, no stone floor at all; just sand…soft, warm, and fine sand, like nothing Lorelei had ever felt underneath her feet. At the back of the cave, the sharkman looked at her as if he had never seen anything like her before either. 

Currently, Sam scratched his gill slits. "Are you happy in a land such as this?"

"Yes," Lorelei answered, kicking her feet through the sand.

"I want you to come with me to my kingdom," he repeated to her again.

"I can't," she responded…again. It was the awkward dance again. Sam asked it every night for the past two months. Their conversations began with this, and never ended with a goodbye. Every time he seemed just as saddened as the first time she turned down his offer. He stopped asking why weeks ago, but he never stopped asking her to.

Sam turned his attention away from her to the pile of treasures he had gathered over his months confined in the cave. He told her he created them because he could, memories of his kingdom, so he does not make his heart and mind sick, so he made them to keep him feeling at home. He told this the first night she sat down in front of the piles of treasures…beautiful shells, conchs, oysters, cowry, many of weird forms and beautiful designs, all in which she has never seen before; shells, that did not exist in this waters, stones of varying smoothness, form, color, and clarity, beautiful sea plants, bits of colorful coral even more beautiful than glass art, pearls the hues of the rainbow, silvery driftwood ribboned with shades of lavender, as smooth as glass. He made them, some he found them (where he did not say, where she did not ask…only admired). But he did not seem happy with these treasures. Everyday there would be new ones, but more often than not, the older treasures would simply disappear. He never kept a piece of treasure for more than a week.

_The first time she examined his treasures, she held up a piece of coral, as red as blood, as delicate as an ice coated branch. "What is your kingdom like?" _

"It is beautiful," he answered, chin resting on his knees, arms wrapped around his shins. "It is far away where the ocean waters are blue and clear, not brown and green, where the sand is full of shells, not stones, where the fish are colorful as the coral and waters."

"Are you king there?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "I am the youngest son of King Achelous."

"Really?" Lorelei asked, picking up a beautiful conch shell, its pattern reminiscent of cherry blossoms.

"Yes," he said. "Will you come to my kingdom with me?"

She was startled and taken back, but quickly answered. "No." 

And so that was its birth; that clumsy dance. It was a dance, it could be nothing else. Sam would make his move, his gestures, his opening act, and Lorelei would gracefully avoid his moves, his offering with her own very much different dance, but all ending on the same step. Sam never acted angry or upset with Lorelei's dismissals; he treated her no differently after the words were said.

Sam sorted through his gifts. Lorelei sat down in front him, her pea coat folded on her lap. The pile was much smaller than it was most other days; perhaps it was because Sam was growing jaded with sitting in the caves perfecting his arts. Today it was just corals and pearls he had formed…memories…Lorelei presumed…of his beautiful kingdom, because coral and pearls were what he created the most. After all, he must be getting bored stuck in this drab little village, with waters of grey, beaches of grey, houses of grey, skies of grey, soils of grey…people of grey…growing greyer and greyer everyday with the sooty smoke from the cannery. Sam rolled sand between his palms, like dough, the dried sand become rounder and rounder, until it was a perfect sphere.

"Where do you come up with your ideas?" Lorelei asked, holding up a branchlike piece of coral the color of a bay leaf.

"From my travels," Sam answered, setting down the ball of sand. There was a small pile of sand balls at his feet. He picked up another pinch of sand and continued rolling

"Where did you go?" she asked.

"Many places," he said. "I went to places where there is no land, only ice, as blue as sapphires, I went to places were there were no beaches, only cliffs on which millions of birds nest the water is powdered with their feathers. I have went to places where vast caverns dot the land and the fish have no eyes and everything is white…many, many places."

"And you ended up here," Lorelei stated dryly. Sam paused in his craft.

"You speak as if you do not like this place, yet you refuse my offer," he said, setting the somewhat deformed ball down. He picked up a ball he made earlier and began to roll it between his palms. With his movements it became shinier and shinier, a pastel sheen coating it.

"We all speak sullenly of our homes, why do you travel away from yours?" she answered. Sam paused.

"Because I have to," he answered and continued rolling. He set a pearl right in front of her, a soft shade of amber, and the size of a shooter marble.

"It's beautiful," she stated taking the little gem between her finger tips and observing it.

"It is yours; I made it for you," he said. She paused.

"I can't," she said tapping it on the floor and rolling it to him.

"You must," he told her. Her stomach answered for her. She sighed and picked the gem up and put it in the pocket of her worn pea coat.

"I must being going, or my aunt and uncle will wonder where I am," she said. "I have a job in the morning, and I need to be there."

"I understand," Sam said…more to the cave, to the world, than her. They were probably the only things he had to converse with when she was not with him.

Lorelei pulled the coat over her heavy, beige sweater and struggled out the cave. Sam stood up and dove into the water at the back of the cave. He left his treasures and a pile of the unfinished pearls. On her way home Lorelei nervously rubbed the massive pearl, still warm from Sam's hands. Did it burn with magic or his warmth? The next morning she reached into her coat pocket, the pearl was heavy and cold.

After a breakfast of porridge and silence with her aunt and uncle, Lorelei walked down to the fish market. She was startled to find it locked and the lights off. In fact, peering in through the smoky windows, there were no fish upon the ice blocks, no knives upon the counter.

"It's closed, Lori," Mr. Filster said softly coming from the side of shop.

"For the day?" Lorelei asked sadly.

"Forever," Mr. Filster stated. "Business hasn't been good; I've been forced to close. I haven't been able to tell you, but I've been ready to close for weeks."

He reached into his pocket and handed her a small change purse. "It's all I have. You have been a good worker and I owe you more than this."

He handed her the change purse and walked away from the abandoned store. Lorelei stood there, holding the change purse. "WAIT! Mr. Filster!"

Lorelei rushed up to the elderly man. She rummaged through her coat pockets. "Here, I found this."

She handed him the pearl. "What?"

"Please, take it," she said. "I have to go."

Lorelei quickly hurried away. For most of the day, she wandered the town, before finally, her wandering led her to the doors of the cannery. It took all of her coins to pay for the aprons, and the knives to work there. At the pawn shop she turned in her pea coat for a few coins. She will be paid in a month at the cannery. She dreamed of money, of happiness, of a better future.

_"Do mermaids dream when they sleep?" Lorelei asked Sam. _

_They were lying in the sand of the cave, staring up at the ceiling. She came into the cave to see him like that, arms behind his head, staring at the roof of the ceiling like a child gazing up at the clouds. With glowing algae he had formed the heavens. Lorelei knew no astronomy, but she knew the Big Dipper, and decided that he had formed the sky and its constellations. Quite strange, but out in the ocean, where there is no land, there is only sky…unreachable and watching. _

"Most don't, but I do," he answered softly.

"When I found you on the beach, did you really wish to die?" she asked in equal softness.

"Yes," he answered.

"Are you answering me truthfully," she asked, "that you really wanted to die and become foam?"

"Yes, we fae cannot lie," Sam stated. "It is the way God made us."

"Why?" she asked rolling on stomach and turning to him.

"They say when God made the fae, the men, the beasts, the angels, the demons, he gave us choices. Beasts chose to be free, to be simple minded, yet pure, always allowed in heaven. God gave man short lives but a free mind and a pure soul, he chooses to do as he wished, a soul that his to corrupt or keep clean. Angels are always in heaven, but they are under his control, they are powerful, but ignorant to pleasure. Demons are not nearly as powerful, but are free per say, but are not allowed in heaven," Sam answered.

"And the fae?" she asked.

"We chose to live long lives, to have great power, but we gave up our souls. We do not go to heaven when we die, the fae of glade turns to ferns, the fae of wind turns to dust, the fae of forest to trees, and the fae of the water to foam. We have the power of angels but deepest desires of men…powerful but caged," Sam answered. "A soul can be pure, a soul can be corrupted, since we do not have our own, we cannot lie and we live only by our shallow desires."

"Do you, your people...love?" Lorelei asked.

Sam paused. "To fall in love, one must acquire soul."

"Can a member of a fae family fall in love?"

"Yes."

"And what if he falls in love?"

"He gains a soul."

"What about families? Does a fae love his family?" Lorelei asked.

"No," Sam answered. "A fae marries for sex and women, marries women for beauty and soft flesh, sex for pleasure and children, and children for labor or into marrying for money and power, and money and power for validation of themselves. The care of others is only for the care of oneself. To truly love in the world of the fae is to gain a soul; it is a powerful thing to happen. A miracle perhaps, but a miracle of our making and choice, but maybe it does not feel that it is of our choice."

"What happens to a fae who gains a soul?" she asked.

"He is confused," Sam answered, "but he content, yet not content, he grows worried about other things, treasure still captivates but it has only a thousandths of the control it once had over him. In a way he is weak, but in a way, he is happy, and certain treasures can actually calm his hunger, and he, for once in his life, will become satisfied."

"Can he lose his soul?" she asked.

"If he grows selfish, what can be regained can be lost, what can be lost can be regained," he said. "Humans can lose their souls, and so can we, if we let ourselves become selfish again. If a human becomes as selfish as a fae, he will surely corrupt his soul into nonexistence."

The cannery alarm sounded, echoing through the cave, shaking away the beautiful little stars.

"Do you wish upon shooting stars?" he asked her.

"No," she lied. 

Lorelei worked in the cannery in the chopping line, where fish came to have their heads, then tails cut off, their torsos would work their way down to another station where they would be skinned (depending on what they were to become) and down to another station where they would be chopped (once again, if they were to be chopped up and the style in which they would be chopped up depended on which station they would go to), then to seasoning and canning. She worked six and a half days a week, working the half day Sunday so she could go to church in the morning. She worked 16 hour days with two twenty minute breaks, paid once a month. She earned a copper for every 100 fish she carved. They counted her fish heads at the end of the day and wrote it down on an oil stained tablet. It was always less than what she thought she did. At the end of the day, Lorelei barely managed to walk herself home, and most the time, she could not even manage to get a bath. She came home smelling of fish, she went to work in the morning smelling of fish. Fish oils seemed to soak into her skin, into her bones. She was working in the cannery for two months, when on a Saturday night she struggled home, she paused on the road, gazing down on the silent cave. She thought of Sam she worked, she wondered, was he still in the cave? She was too embarrassed to tell him she now worked in the cannery, feeling that it was perhaps, also too stupid of her to give away the pearl, feeling like an idiot giving away a gift he gave her, but she felt it was right, but she did not feel it was right to tell him. She did not want to face him…still; she did walk down to the cave.

Her feet touched fine sand.

"You smell of death," said Sam.

He was sitting in the back of the cave, observing her. He seemed larger than he did months earlier. His head was proud, his eyes shining green, his skin a pale silver, his stomach white as snow. The scar was a pencil thin line of whiteness across his back. He looked even healthier than he did two months earlier. He had been eating well; there was a pile of cannery fishing nights in the corner of the cave.

He was not lying. She could not lie to him.

"I am working at the cannery now," she said softly, wrapping her arms around herself, covering her blood stained apron, her blood stained clothing…trying to cover it. She looked off to the side as she spoke, not looking him directly in the eyes.

Sam observed her pea coat was gone. "What happened to the pearl I gave you?"

She paused and looked at him, then looked away. "I gave it away…to someone else…who needed it more than me. My old employer lost his shop."

"I understand then," Sam stated. He was not angered, nor upset. His eyes glittered for a moment when she told him that. He looked worried suddenly. "You seem very unhappy Lorelei."

Lorelei paused. She leaned against the cave wall then slid down to the floor. "I'm just a little tired from this job."

Sam sat right beside her. He took her hand in his. His hand was warm, welcoming, and supple…not like the cold, stiff bodies of the fish. "I want you to come with me."

"No Sam, I can't go," she said, too tired to argue, too sick of hearing it to take it seriously.

"No," he said softly, "I don't mean like that. Just for the night, I want to take you somewhere, some place, just for the night."

"Where?" she asked tiredly.

"I do not know where, where the waves take us, and I will bring you back," he answered. "Please take that apron off."

Lorelei removed. It was so saturated with blood, wet and dried, it soundly plopped and echoed. Sam picked her up off the ground and carried her to the surf. He set her down the surf, holding onto her wrists he gently led her into the waters. The cold waves crashed at Lorelei's feet, and then she felt nothing it felt as if she was standing on land…during the summer months.

Sam was holding her hand; they both were floating in the ocean…underwater. He pulled her over to him; maneuvering so that she was now on his back, holding on the single large fin.

And so he swam. He darted passed the cannery ships, laden with fish, passed their hungering nets and motors. He darted through the dark grey green waters of the village bay, to the dark velvet waters of the wide ocean, where glowing invertebrates dotted the darkness like stars in the sky. They swarmed around them then quickly dissipated. He brought her to the frozen arctic, where the waters…as blue as sapphires…were dotted with massive icebergs, white as bone on top, as blue as turquoise below, as if the sapphire waters became trapped in a hollow white frame. Through the crevices and crevasses they swam. Slowly, Lorelei grew tired; Sam maneuvered himself rolling onto his back like a sea otter, bringing Lorelei to his chest. His hands touched her hair…brown and smooth as driftwood, light as an anemone's tentacles. She was sound asleep; her face bore peace, happiness, contentedness. Satisfied he swam backwards carrying his precious treasure back home; the ocean waters washing the fish oils and blood from her skin. Her touch felt like a blanket.

_She never approached him the first month he knew her. She stood at the mouth of the cave and spoke to him. Just stood there, in a ragged oversized pea coat, an oversized undyed sweater of wool, and a long skirt. She brought him food, set it at the mouth of the cave, but never dared to approach him. _

"What do you call yourself?"

"Lo—" pause "Lore—" pause "I call myself Lorelei," she answered.

"It is a name from the ocean," he answered to her from the shadows.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Samebito," he answered.

"Is it okay if I call you 'Sam'?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"You can call me Lori if you like," she responded.

"I prefer to call you Lorelei," he answered. 

"We're back Lorelei," he whispered to the slumbering human. Lorelei slowly opened her eyes. It was near daybreak.

"Oh no!" she said. "I'm late for work!"

She pulled herself out of his arms, snatching up the apron floor. She raced out into the sunlight, her feet scarcely making a sound on the stones, but it sounded like thunder to Sam.

That night he dreamed of her brown hair in the ocean floating in aquamarine water, the weight of her body upon his chest, the smooth skin of her gill-less neck, the sound of her feet on stone.

Lorelei was gone for another three and a half months before she came to visit Sam. His marks on the stone—silvery marks—were in a different place now on the walls—there were two other places were he had started and stopped marking. One near his bed, Four months, two weeks and two days, another one on one wall was two months, and this one was about three and half months. He was marking the wall, tracing a finger down, leaving a line as smooth as mother pearl in the rough surface when her feet struck the soft sand.

She was still wearing the undyed sweater, the worn skirt, the bloodied apron was rolled under her arm—dried blood dyed the side of her sweater. She was quiet; she looked at him, in the eyes. He was quiet too. She sat down against the wall; he sat down beside her.

"You seem very unhappy," he said.

"I'm tired," she said. "I'm exhausted."

"This work is not good for you Lorelei," he said, "it kills not just the waters, the fish; it kills the people as well."

He dared to touch her hair, heavy with sweat…with salts…smelling of the salts of tears. "It will kill you."

"Maybe it will," she answered softly, rubbing her nicked, sliced up hands together. They were a patchwork quilt of bruises, blisters from the knife handles, nicks from fish fins, gashes from knife blades. They'll never be smooth again.

"I don't want to see you die," he whispered to into her ear. Lorelei leaned onto him.

_Months ago he sat too close to her and she scooted away. _

"You're scared of me," he said, "aren't you?"

"Yes," she answered softly. 

Currently Lorelei's hand rubbed underneath his jaw. Her finger touched one of his gill slits. His head jerked.

"That hurt, didn't it?" she said.

"Yes," he answered.

"I'm sorry," she told him.

"It is all right," he responded. He touched the skin of her neck. "Your skin is very smooth. Gills would not suit you."

She chuckled. "Yeah."

His fingertips remained on her neck. Lorelei sighed softly.

The alarm at the factory sounded again. Lorelei stood up. "I have to get home."

Sam started a new count on the other side of his bed. He was startled the next day to find Lorelei had returned. He scratched away his mark, returning the stone to its roughness. Lorelei was illuminated by the full moon behind her, it was only one of two times he had seen a full moon.

She was not wearing the bloodied apron; she did even have it on her person. But she still had the sweater on, and the worn skirt, but he could not imagine her in anything else. She smiled. She walked up to him, slowly, step by step, and then pressed her forehead against his chest. He was not cold like fish, but his body was warm as a man's…in fact it was much hotter. His white skin blushed pinked.

_Months ago… _

"Do you find me ugly?" he asked her many nights after she admitting her fear of him.

She paused, wigging her toes in the sand. "Different. Do you find me ugly?"

"No," he answered. 

Her lips pressed against his mouth. Her scarred hands pressed against his chest, and he held onto her wrists, smooth as polished shell.

"Do you find me ugly?" he asked, pulling his mouth away from hers, holding onto her wrist.

"No," she answered. "Do you find me?"

"No, I never did," he whispered and pulled her close to him away from the mouth of the cave, away from the village, away from the cannery, away from the dying ocean. He wanted to pull her out of the sight of them, pulling them out of sight for her.

It was a strange moment when he brought her to him. Lorelei startled the moment his hands wandered to the heavy sweater, to her breast, to the fluttering heart. The sweater was itchy to him; he wondered how itchy it was to her. Her heart fluttered again.

"I can't," she said and hurried away, pulling herself from the bed, from Sam's hands. She rushed out the opening, loudly clamoring over the stones.

Sam rescratched the wall. He put his hands behind his head and gazed up the ceiling. Only one or two glowing specks of algae remained. His mind dwelled on past conversations.

_"Do you miss your family?" _

"Perhaps, the feeling is strange," Sam answered her. "I miss something…"

"How big is your family?"

"I have one father, one mother, and twelve brothers," he answered. "How big is yours?"

"Only my paternal uncle and his second wife," she answered.

"You have no siblings?" he asked.

"I remember having a little sister that passed away from scarlet fever," she answered.

"Do you miss her?"

"I was only four when it happened," she answered. "But I am sad because I think of what we could have done together. I think of what it would be like to have a little sister, and I miss that affection that could have happened."

"I believe I understand the feeling," he said to her. 

There was no sand upon the floor when Lorelei stepped down into the cave three weeks later. More nets from the cannery ship have piled up. Along the wall, she found another group of lines. She counted. There were only twenty marks…had Sam left the day before? His bed remained beside the underwater cave system. She touched the snail shells he had decorated it with, planning to pluck one off to take with her.

"I am leaving the cave in a week," Sam spoke up from behind her. Lorelei jumped, and turned to face him. He looked at the bare ground.

"You…you are?" she said, looking at him.

"I must," he told her. "I cannot stay here much longer."

"Oh," she said as he walked passed her and crawled into his bed, "I'm sorry to hear that."

There was silence.

"I must go," Lorelei said.

"Please stay," Sam spoke up. "Just for the night."

"I have work in the morning," Lorelei said.

"Lorelei, tell me, are you happy with this work? With the job of gutting fish, killing one after the other every moment of the day? As smoke and steam roars?" he said.

"Actually, I cut their heads off," she said.

"But are you happy with that?" he said.

Lorelei paused before she answered. "No, but I have no choice."

"Yes you do," Sam stated.

"If I choose not to spend the night with you, then that is my choice, if I choose to go to work in the morning; that is my choice. They are all my choices," Lorelei said.

"If you choose to go home and go to bed and not go to work in the morning, that is a fine choice, but these current choices you make are not choices, they are chains, Lorelei," he said standing up. He chucked her under the chin. Both his hands pressed into her cheeks and he pulled her face to his. "I cannot stand to see you chained up like this. You are too beautiful for that."

Lorelei sniffed. "I can't do this anymore. I hate it; you don't understand how much I hate this."

"I feel it," he whispered into her face.

"You're lying," she said.

"I can't," he responded.

They kissed. It was a dam exploding, a tin can rupturing over a fire.

Sam pulled her away from the mouth of the cave, from the cannery smoke, from the crash of the green ocean, from the orange embers of the village, from the moonlight on slime covered stones. She did not reject, nor push away.

The dance was over.

Sam put his arm over her, his touch warm, and this world felt somewhat warmer…just a bit chilly…but it was the perfect kind of warmth and coldness…the kind of concoction, the kind of alchemy…magic…or curse…that demanded an embrace mixed in with it to create perfection.

When Sam awoke the next morning, Lorelei was gone. A horn sounded at the cannery to call in its workers.

One week passed. Lorelei did not go to the cave, she even took the effort to walk three streets over, and so she could never see or hear the bay waters. Necessity overcame pleasure, and she could not bear to tell Sam that. She needed to…over what she wanted to. Her own shame, embarrassment of lying with a merman, kept her from looking at, let alone enter, that cave. She couldn't face him; she did not feel like she could. The feeling of being conquered, even though she very much was not, made her queasy in the stomach.

_"Can fae choose?" _

"What?"

"Can fae choose what they are going to do?"

"Yes, but the problem is desire is too strong, and many remain steadfast and simply choose not to choose."

"Sounds difficult."

"Could but won't."

"Being lazy sounds like a good term."

"Foolish is better." 

Lorelei returned home. Her aunt and uncle were eating a silent supper with eyes focusing on spoons and the wood of the table, she struggled passed them and into her bed.

She slept well through the night, not even hearing the warning alarm of the cannery to call in its workers. They would not let her into the factory when she rushed to its doors. She was too late. Anyone who was late risked being fired risked losing their pay for the month. She was only a minute late, but they shut the doors on her anyway. Lorelei tossed her lunch pail and her apron at the doorway and stormed away, leaving her belongings like a monument dedicated to someone dead. She left and walked away, down Main Street, down the rocking shore, down the grainy beach to the cave.

It was empty. No nest, most of the markings on the walls were gone, except for a grouping of seven near the mouth of cave…right near the mouth as if someone stared down the shore…watched the shore like a hopeful dog sitting on the porch, looking down the road waiting for its owner.

He did not lie to her.

"Sam!" she cried to herself, to the memory of him in the cave. "Oh Sam, oh Sam! I'm sorry!"

She fell to her knees, onto the bare cold stone. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was being an idiot."

"You were not being an idiot," Sam's voice fluttered, "only steadfast in your choice of offerings."

Lorelei clamored out of the cave onto the rocky shore then onto the sandy beach. Sam's head peeked out of the water. He looked away at the foamy surf.

"You told me you were going to leave," she stated to him, wading slowly through the thick water up to him. He looked back at her.

"I couldn't leave," he said, returning his gaze to the brown flecked surf. He looked at her and brought his hand under her chin, tilting her face up to his. "And beside, my exact words were I was going to leave the cave. I didn't say anything about leaving you. We fae do not lie, but we do say quite confusing things sometimes. Our minds are quick to bend word. In it is our second nature, like the stubbornness of mankind"

She stood in knee deep water, looking up at him. "Why?"

"Because I love you," he answered. His voice turned soft. "Will you come with me?"

He offered her his hand.

She took it.

For years the village spoke of the girl swallowed up by a merrow, stolen away at the shore, grabbed by the wrist and snapped away. To each other, to their children, they spoke her fate…death…enslavement…hunger…trapped in limbo. They spoke and spoke of it every night, every morning, at every gathering. They spoke of it until the cannery bells called them to work.


End file.
